124 Quotes About Authoritarianism

In an authoritarian system, the masses suffer from a guilty conscience even when they insist on their rights before the dictator's eyes.

No. 2’s infamous opening line is a double gambit: the Village does not really want information, of course, only obedience. (From their point of view, information is an exchange-value, not a use-value). In fact, it is No. 6 who truly wants information: information on who No. 1 is, where the Village really is, which side runs it, and how it might be possible to escape.

Heiner Müller zeroed in on this contradiction by noting ascerbically that the main economic activity of the Eastern regimes was always the production of state enemies (in other words, the system produced vast numbers of literate, well-educated workers who could not fail to notice the yawning gap between the ideal of a people’s democracy and the despotism of the one-party state).

Religiosity that is hostile to sex is the product of authoritarian society.

The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty has become the doctrine of the executive in Parliament....

When we've got these people who have practically limitless powers within a society, if they get a pass without so much as a slap on the wrist, what example does that set for the next group of officials that come into power? To push the lines a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further, and we'll realize that we're no longer citizens - we're subjects.

In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear.